Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
31 December 2024
Almeida Theatre
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
The sold out run of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Almeida theatre is set to run until 1st February. The stand-out Tennessee Williams play is a tense and emotional journey, in this production it runs a juicy three hours including one interval, and a short 5 minute break between act two and three.
The family drama is set on a cotton plantation in the 1950s and revolves around the influential Pollitt clan. It is Big Daddy’s birthday, but the truth of the severity of his illness has been hidden from him by his children, sons Brick and Gooper. Brick’s marriage to Maggie is in crisis, while Gooper and his wife Mae are plotting to take over the plantation against Big Daddy’s wishes. There is a lot of drama, but the main focus is the strained relationship between Brick and everyone in his life. He is a heavy alcoholic, but still his father’s favourite, struggles with the loss of his best friend Skipper, and has not touched his wife in a very long time.
The first act focuses on Maggie and her struggle to rescue her marriage to Brick. She has married into the wealthy family and desperately wants to hold on to the wealth despite her husbands dire disinterest in her, her need to produce an heir to solidify their status within the family, and her suspicion that Brick and Skipper were in love. While Daisy Edgar-Jones is fantastically intense in her frantic appeals to Brick, the first act feels like an eternity of repetition and making the same point over and over. Lines are repeated, rephrased, rehashed, and re-examined continually without driving the plot forward or exploring much of the character’s inner lives. When the first interval came around, I started considering walking out as I was simply bored with how dull and relentlessly repetitious the first act felt. Knowing that act two and three have more characters come in and expand the drama, I pushed through, and am very glad I did. This production gets so much better once more characters enter the fray.
Big Mama is indeed a big presence, though occasionally too downtrodden, and Mae is stunningly unpleasant, a brilliant performance by Pearl Chanda, bringing the conniving and manipulative woman to life. Gooper is quite non-descript and not strong enough in his insistence, seeming lack-lustre rather than the cunning businessman who wants to steal his father’s business from his useless brother. Big Daddy however brings life and passion to the stage, berating everyone while speaking harsh truths as much as simply aiming to hurt people. The most effortless and convincing performance is undoubtedly by Kingsley Ben-Adir, developing and growing throughout the runtime from a disengaged wreck to a wilful broken spirit, an absolute delight to watch in all its horribleness.
It isn’t until well into the second act when it becomes clear that the pianist, who has been sitting on stage, lurking on the sidelines when not actively playing, is a stand-in for Skipper, like the lost friend’s ghost witnessing the family falling apart and Brick numbing his pain through bottle after bottle. A stunning addition to the production that has a gorgeously haunting effect, deepening the emotional impact of Skipper’s plot-line’s slow reveal throughout the second and third acts. The homophobia is definitely toned down in this production that very much leans heavily into the Brick-and-Skipper-were-in-love angle, but the misogyny is still alive and well throughout.
My biggest issues with the play however were that it is way too long for its substance. It could have easily been whittled down to two hours runtime by removing the incessant repetition that permeates throughout, leading to a patronising tone that seems to think the audience is very dim indeed and will need the same thing spelled out at least five times before understanding what is being said. It’s quite dull through these constant re-running of lines and points moments and takes a good two hours to really get interesting and well balanced. Yet even then, the intensity feels performative, too engineered to be organic and natural. With some editing, tightening up of the script, removal of the tedious repetition, the pacing could flow a lot better with a much shorter runtime.
Another sore point is Big Daddy constantly calling his wife fat, when a straight-size actor was cast in the role. At least cast a fat actor if you’re going to have a woman called fat multiple times, it could have been played off in a much less fatphobic manner that way. Surely we do not need more fat jokes towards not-fat women on stage.
Overall, the production felt unrefined and condescending, though this is not down to the performances of the actors but simply the length and needless repetition of line after line. Surely this should have been spotted and amended during previews? Still, there are some stellar performances to be seen with this brilliant cast fully leaning into the script.
